GOP senator blocking Warsh makes his stand on market stability |
GOP senator blocking Warsh makes his stand on market stability
The one man blocking Donald Trump from installing Kevin Warsh as his new Federal Reserve chair has drawn a red line: the stability of the US financial markets.
Republican Thom Tillis, who will retire in January after two Senate terms, provided key backing for some of Trump’s most controversial nominees, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
But the 65-year-old former management consultant, who has close ties to his home-state banking industry in North Carolina, sees his standoff with the White House over Warsh’s nomination as a stand for Fed independence and, by extension, the health of markets. This time, he says he’s not budging, even though he believes Warsh would do a good job.
When Tillis learned in January about the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, he recalled this week he immediately considered it an attack on the independence of the central bank and worried it would tank........